


Picture Perfect

by langsdelijn



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Teenage Brocedes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 12:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4920397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/langsdelijn/pseuds/langsdelijn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lewis, Nico, and awkward poolside confessions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Picture Perfect

Nico sits beside him and drapes liberally himself around his shoulders. Lewis freezes, tries to pretend this feels like any of the other countless times they’ve sat like this, that the warmth spreading down through his skin where Nico presses against him is body heat and nothing else, in the hopes that Nico won’t be able to tell anything is the matter and things between them can stay… normal.

‘What?’ he asks, kicking his legs through the water as though he’s annoyed and imposed on, not anything else.

Nico laughs. ‘Yes, hello to you too.’

Lewis shoves him, a reaction which is thankfully so second-nature by now that he leaves himself no time to overthink it. In retaliation, Nico pounces on him with enough force to bowl him over and send him sprawling out on the dry, uncovered tiles hot from a day in the full sun. ‘Hot,’ Lewis gasps—it’s not immediately painful but that’s not to say it’s comfortable, either, although it does solve his earlier problem because the heat seeping into his skin at moment has definitely come down from the sun for the full one hundred per cent.

‘Oh?’ Nico grins down at him as if under the impression Lewis had not meant that entirely literally. Nico looks like something from a romance flick like this, with the way the sun filters through his hair, with his pose, and not to forget with his annoying perfect general Nico-ness. Lewis rolls his eyes up at him but the message fails to cross over. ‘What?’

‘Hot,’ Lewis repeats, more emphatically this time.

It’s a comical sight the way Nico’s eyes widen in shock when he finally gets it but, honestly, he really can be an idiot at times. ‘Oh,’ he says. 

He leans back with an appropriately chastised-sounding muttered apology so Lewis can get back into a sitting position. This time, Nico keeps his distance but Lewis can’t help the shiver that runs through him when he feels his shoulder with the back of his hand. 

The hand disappears again.

Lewis looks at Nico, who is morosely staring at the formerly offending hand in his lap. ‘What?’ he asks, then looks away again.

‘Nothing,’ Nico says, in a way that is suspiciously familiar from protestations he remembers making himself in the moments he worried that he would somehow give himself away to Nico. But it can’t be that, surely. It’s plain statistics, they can’t both be…. 

No, of course not. It’s wishful thinking and it’s useless. Nico must mean something else.

‘Oh, okay,’ Lewis says. ‘Whatever.’

‘It didn’t, like, hurt you or anything, did I?’ Nico asks.

Lewis scoffs. ‘No, man, of course not. What, d’you think I would’ve laid there long enough for you to figure out what I meant if it were that hot?’

Nico is silent for a very long time before he finally admits that, no, he would not have and sorry again for not understanding. Lewis turns to him and sees he’s blushing faintly. And then Nico catches him watching and he looks away in embarrassment. As if it was that bad. Nico can be so dramatic.

Although… no. Nico gets overdramatic, that’s as good an explanation for this as any, and certainly a better one than that other one. And this is the second time in a matter of minutes that Lewis has found his thoughts drifting in that direction so he has to stop that. 

He needs a distraction, he decides. And Nico, sitting where he sits, is one good shove away from an involuntary swim—it’s as good a plan as any, he considers, and it might even have some unexpected advantages. Lewis plants both his hands in the middle of Nico’s back and pushes. Nico tumbles forward into the water before he has time to get out the entirety of his surprised squeak.

Lewis laughs at a job well done when Nico surfaces, sputtering, his hair plastered to his head. ‘What the hell was that for?’ he demands.

‘No reason.’

Nico rests his arms on the edge of the pool, one of his arms brushing one of Lewis’ legs. It’s not the first time they’ve been like this but he feels so much closer now, the casual way Nico is looking up at him. 

Without thinking, Lewis reaches out to brush some of Nico’s hair back from his forehead. Jesus, what has he done now, what is Nico supposed to make of this? And should he—but if he does it now—which is worse, he doesn’t know. 

In the end, his hand stays where it is, tangled in Nico’s hair. Drops of water bead up from the locks bunched between his fingers and drip down as evidence time still flows despite the way it seems to have crystallised around them. ‘Lewis….’

‘Yeah?’ he asks tentatively.

‘Is this…?’

Lewis considers lying. He could try to play this off as nothing, a pretext for shoving Nico back down into the water, the way friends do when they’ve got nothing uncomfortable standing in the way between them. Nico might even believe him, if only because it would be more comfortable for him to pretend otherwise and ignore this snarl of complications. 

But it feels as if he constantly has to be on his guard now, lest he give himself away, and it’s exhausting. When he first realised his feelings he’d worried that they would change things between the two of them if Nico ever found out about them but they already have, haven’t they, even though he’s done his best to keep this to himself things have been different lately. All the casual touches, their easy companionship, sharing a room and a bed, the myriad small things their friendship was made up of that he’d ended up distancing himself from in a futile attempt to keep things the same.

And it’s not as if he’s ever truly worried that Nico would take it the wrong way. At least, not the wrong way in the worst way. But there had been times Lewis had thought of telling him, and between the possibility of a thoughtless dismissal and the likely futility of an honesty that would only serve to make everything more difficult, he had decided to say nothing every time.

‘You still look like some romance flick hero,’ Lewis says, which is not an admission and not a denial but an oblique way to try to discuss this and is, in its own way, true. 

Nico looks dubious. ‘What, me?’

Oh, he cannot be serious. ‘Yes, you,’ Lewis confirms, not bothering to keep the disbelief out of his voice. ‘You, with your hair and your eyes and your smiles and your—your’—but he decides he isn’t ready yet to actually say “your body” out loud without wanting to die of mortification so he skips that one—‘and your dad and the racing and everything. And you speak ten languages.’ 

‘Five,’ Nico corrects. Lewis doesn’t know why he still bothers, honestly, it’s not like he doesn’t know that Lewis comes up with these outrageous numbers for no other purpose than tease him (no one needs to speak five languages, surely, even someone like Nico only needs like three at most). 

‘And you’re wicked smart,’ Lewis adds because why stop here when there is so much more material with which to dig this hole deeper.

Nico goes red again. Of course that’s the flattery that gets to him, not the earlier babbling about his looks. ‘So are you,’ he says, which is a nonsense bit of false modesty—Lewis is not insecure about his own intelligence but outside of things related to racing, school stuff comes easy to Nico in a way that it doesn’t for him. ‘I mean it, Lewis, I wish I had your insight.’ He’s silent for a moment. ‘You don’t seriously think some movie character would be like me, do you?’

‘What? Yeah I do. And you could play yourself in a film, man, what are you on about? You’re basically perfect.’ Well, he hadn’t meant to say it quite like that but it’s out now.

‘But I….’ Nico’s protest trails off. ‘A romantic lead needs a love interest, huh?’ he continues instead, and he’s hesitant at first but gains confidence as he speaks. ‘Any… interest in that at all?’

Lewis swallows. ‘What are you saying?’ he asks. But he suspects he knows. ‘Are you saying…?’

‘I am saying,’ Nico says slowly, ‘that I—I asked you to be my love interest, what else can that mean?—I like you, Lewis.’

‘But you can’t,’ Lewis says dumbly.

‘Um. Why not?’

Lewis shrugs helplessly. ‘Because how could we both be—’

‘Be what?’ Nico interrupts, now on the defensive. ‘Wait. What do you mean, “both”?’

‘You know what “both” means,’ Lewis points out. What is wrong with him that he’s learned that, impossibly, Nico feels the same way about him and all he can feel is a numb sense of disbelief? ‘I’ve been in love with you for ages.’

‘Ages?’

‘Yeah, man, months.’

Nico doesn’t respond for some time, just keeps looking at him thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he admits.

‘No, I know,’ Lewis says. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Maybe we should…,’ Nico suggests.

‘Yeah.’ Lewis nods.

So the topic is dropped for the time being, and Lewis lets himself slide into the pool, swims a couple laps while Nico watches and finds it no help in clearing his head. He swims back to Nico, ignores the remark that he could walk, you know, because contrary to some people here, he actually enjoys swimming. ‘We have to talk about this,’ he says.

‘What is there to talk about, Lewis?’ Nico asks. ‘I could tell you all the times I’ve wanted to kiss you, or all the times—’ Nico stops talking when Lewis steps closer. ‘What?’

‘I do want to hear all those things,’ Lewis whispers. ‘But only after I do this,’ he adds, sliding his hands into Nico’s hair again, then kisses him. It’s not the perfect first kiss that it would be in a film, though the location is photogenic enough and so is the moment of concern about being caught by Nico’s parents, but it will do, and they have time.

The second and third attempts are already massive improvements, as are the next few when they get out of the water and they end up on their sides facing each other in the heat of the sun. And later (much, much later; many kisses and mutual admissions later), when they’re called in for dinner, Lewis can scarcely believe he had ever thought this impossible.


End file.
